Indonesian Plane With 189 Aboard Crashes Into Sea Near Jakarta

An aircraft with 189 passengers on board is believed to have sunk after crashing into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java on Monday.

The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from the capital on its way to the country’s tin-mining hub, officials said.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said the Lion Air flight, JT610, lost contact 13 minutes after takeoff, adding that a tug boat leaving the capital’s port had seen the craft falling.

“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” the spokesman, Yusuf Latif, said by text message, when asked about the fate of the plane, which air tracking service Flightradar 24 identified as a Boeing 737 MAX 8.

Debris thought to be from the plane, including aircraft seats, was found near an offshore refining facility in the Java Sea, an official of state energy firm Pertamina said.

Wreckage had been found near where the plane lost contact with air traffic officials on the ground, said Muhmmad Syaugi, the head of the search and rescue agency said.

“We don’t know yet whether there are any survivors,” Syaugi told a news conference, adding that no distress signal had been received from the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter.

“We hope, we pray, but we cannot confirm.”

An official of Indonesia’s safety transport committee said he could not confirm the cause of the crash.

Confirmation of the crash would have to wait until the recovery of the plane’s black boxes, as the cockpit voice recorder and data flight recorder are known.

“We will collect all data from the control tower,” said Soerjanto Tjahjono. “The plane is so modern, it transmits data from the plane and that we will review too.

”But the most important is the blackbox.”

Australia had not received signals from the plane’s emergency locator either, it told Indonesia in a reply to a query, agency chief Syaugi said.

The effort to locate the wreckage and retrieve the black boxes will represent the second major deep sea recovery challenge for Indonesian investigators.

This similar to the experience encountered after an AirAsia Airbus jet crashed into the Java Sea in December 2015.

Indonesia’s Lion Air says crashed plane was airworthy.

Under international rules, the U.S. National Transpotation Safety Board will automatically assist with the inquiry into Monday’s crash, backed up by technical advisers from Boeing.

Also to back them is U.S.-French engine maker CFM International, co-owned by General Electric and Safran.

Boeing is aware of the airplane accident reports and is “closely monitoring” the situation, a company spokesman told the Media.

The flight took off from Jakarta around 6.20 a.m. and was due to have landed in the capital of the Bangka-Belitung tin mining region at 7.20 a.m., the Flightradar 24 website showed.